


Amygdala

by Hale13



Series: Whump Bingo 2020 [23]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Dehumanization, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Peter Parker, Irondad, Major Character Injury, Peter Parker Whump, Stream of Consciousness, Torture, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, Whump, Whump Bingo, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27174208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hale13/pseuds/Hale13
Summary: Sometimes you get taken.  Sometimes it means something.  Sometimes its for ransom, sometimes its for revenge.Sometimes its just because your different.  Sometimes its just for needless cruelty.A Whumptober kidnapping staple.(For Bingo space O3 – Trying to be subtle while leaning against objects to stay upright.)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Whump Bingo 2020 [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943986
Comments: 8
Kudos: 95





	Amygdala

**Author's Note:**

> What’s Whumptober without a dark, kidnapping, torture fic???
> 
> This is very disjointed and jumpy and has some graphic descriptions of violence and torture. It also has the undercurrent of suicidal thoughts, depression and just general despair.
> 
> Please take care reading and don’t read if that will bother you.

Peter’s head bounces off the concrete as he’s tossed back into the room and he prays that he’ll pass out and whines when the room spins and blurs and shakes and gives him some of the worse vertigo he’s ever felt. But he stays awake. By this point he shouldn’t expect for good things to happen to him.

It’s been a long time, Peter thinks, that he’s been here. He tried to keep track of the days when he was first… taken… but they – whoever they were that had him – did their best to keep an inconsistent schedule to confuse him. It didn’t really help that he was unsure how long he was initially knocked out for, how long he was in the car, how long he was kept in the vibranium cage before his kidnappers sold him off for untold amounts of money. His room is dark and damp and mildew-y and holds the clean scent of tilled earth so he must be underground.

It doesn’t help him keep track of his days.

A shiver wracks down his spine and Peter tucks his aching everything up into the fetal position, wrapping his arms around his shins to keep them tucked up, blood and other fluids flaking off in sheets and Peter cringes. Some days he gets lucky and the medical staff will clean him up via throwing him in a tepid shower and scrubbing him down and will give him sweatpants and a t-shirt to wear. Today isn’t one of those days. Today he pissed them off by talking too much and they threw him back in the cell dirty and naked and vulnerable.

Not that he cares too much about his nudity these days, he lost his dignity a while ago (a week, a month, a year who knows) and everyone in here has seen what he’s packing. The first time they stripped him down he had a panic attack so bad that he passed out and woke up in his cell an unknown amount of time later. He was shaken and terrified and knew, he just knew, that this was going to be Skip all over again and he couldn’t…

He couldn’t…

But it wasn’t. So far they hadn’t touched his dick apart from the perfunctory cleaning he got in the shower. He had fought against it the first few times but he soon realized it wasn’t worth it. Peter was smart, he had to plan and he knew his energy would be better used elsewhere.

He curled up tighter in a ball as another shiver ran down his spine and tried to force his body to relax. It took time, but he fell into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

The first bit of time Peter was here he felt hopeful. 

He wasn’t sure where, exactly, he had been nabbed but he woke up wearing his normal clothes, spider suit no where to be found. He was glad of that at least, he doubted that they would have let him keep his suit if he’d been wearing it and he could at least stay warm in his jeans and hoodie during the initial isolation period.

The only interaction he got on those days was a bottle of water and a peanut butter sandwich shoved through a slot in the door at unreliable intervals. Was it a day? Twelve hours? Three? He tried to abstain for the first couple feedings but a voice in his head that sounded like Tony reminded him that he needed to eat, needed to keep his strength up. When he was rescued in a few days they may need his help to fight their way out.

Then the experiments started.

They must have dosed him with some inhalant because he didn’t recall them sedating him and pulling him from the room. He woke up gagged, arms bound above him head as his pants were removed and his ankles cuffed to the table. He struggled and fought and screamed obscenities through the gag but couldn’t get free.

Comparatively, that first day wasn’t so bad, it actually remind him of the yearly physicals he would get at the doctor but slightly more invasive. They took over a pint of blood leaving him woozy, they scraped a four by four piece of skin off leaving only the last few layers of skin to protect his calf muscle, they shoved swabs in his mouth and up his nose making him gag and sneeze. They violently pulled out a clump of hair that left his scalp stinging.

Muscles were palpated, lymph nodes groped, they attached EKG leads to his chest and took baseline readings. Peter felt out of it, light-headed by the end and nearly let out a sigh of relief when the materials were put away. Or so he thought.

He screamed when they scraped the skin off the bottom of his left foot, toes to heel, leaving it burning and bleeding. He hyperventilated as he watched the doctor place the bloody hunk of skin under a microscope, the image projecting onto a computer screen and showing the tiny hairs that Peter had grown nearly everywhere that, along with electromagnetism, allowed him to stick to anything.

He vomited in the gag and nearly aspirated before someone pulled it off and tilted him to the side, bile burning in his nose and airways.

The pain as his body tried to heal that night in the cell was like nothing he had ever felt before but he still had hope. Tony was coming. The Avengers were coming. This would be the worst of it. 

They’d be here.

* * *

Light seeping through the open doorway roused Peter sometime later and he nearly cried. It was taking longer and longer to heal between each session but the time between felt shorter and shorter. The guard at the door, silent as always, they were all silent, stuck his nightstick into his palm and cocked an eyebrow. Peter knew what that meant – easy way or the hard way.

It didn’t take any time to contemplate.

Peter pulled himself up on shaky, coltish legs and took slow, hobbling steps forward until he stood in front of the guard, swaying with the effort to stay upright and attempting to lean against the doorframe. A hand fell to the back of Peter’s neck and steered him, stumbling, out into the hall. They passed the normal examination room and Peter was pushed into the waiting arms of the medical staff in the prison style bathroom next door.

Must be a sample collection day.

He dealt with the indignity of pissing into a collection cup before he was shoved under the pounding spray of water and washed by two of the assistants. He flinched as they cleaned over old incisions, not taking any care in being gentle before he was turned and his back was cleaned. His skin was tinged brown from the antiseptic they used to clean him and Peter wondered morbidly if it was stained the yellow/orange color of betadine forever. His hair hung in limp strands around his face – they never bothered with cleaning it, just cutting it unevenly when it got too long.

Once dried, Peter allowed himself to be led into the room next door, tremors barely running through him as he was strapped onto the table. The doctors and assistants were all wearing surgical gowns today and his stomach sank; he still hadn’t recovered from the last time, the long knotted scar traveling from just under his sternum to his pelvic bone. Peter gave a futile tug on the restraints, just to confirm them unbreakable, before letting himself go boneless on the table, eyes going fuzzy as he dissociated. A mask fit over his face and he took greedy breaths, eager to sleep.

He was still awake when he felt the cold bite of the scalpel.

* * *

Peter woke up in his cell, the pain in his body stunning. He let out a hoarse whimper and shivered but didn’t try to tuck his legs up this time – he could tell something was wrong with his knee and he knew better than to move it too much or he risked re-opening whatever incision was there. He supposed he should be thankful this time, they at least had given him a pair of ratty and threadbare scrub pants to wear.

Peter tried to get as comfortable as he could on the cold, hard floor but it didn’t really matter – he slipped back into sleep nearly instantly.

Realty came in fits and starts after that. He woke to the sound of the flap opening to give him food and water but slipped back under without eating or drinking. He woke again to one of the guards prodding him with a nightstick and forcing the water bottle and sandwich into his hands. Peter remembers taking a small sip of the water and vomiting it back up before it even made it down his esophagus to his stomach. The guard grunted in disgust and left. Peter slept.

He woke to a cold table, to bright white lights, to a pinch in his hand. Must be an IV catheter for fluids, he figured. It had happened before when he was too worn out to eat. A fail safe to keep him alive when they had nearly used him up.

Peter let his eyes fall back closed. He was so tired. Maybe this would finally be the one time they couldn’t fix him. Maybe they had taken everything from him. Maybe he could finally – _finally_ – rest.

The flashing of red lights and the blaring of an alarm pulled Peter from unconsciousness and he frowned. The alarms had gone off a fair few times before to condition him. It was always a test and he knew his captors got a sick kick out of his hopefulness the first few times. It was old hat now and Peter just slid his eyes back shut and tried to rest.

“Peter?”

Peter eyes snapped open and he laboriously head to look at the door. To look at the silhouette of Clint Goddamn Barton standing, arrow cocked, staring back at him in shock.

“Mr. Barton?” Was he hallucinating? He hadn’t yet but maybe he had finally cracked.

If his brain was going to do this to him it could have at least shown him Tony.

“I’ve got Spidey in a room off the southwest corridor, requesting back up for extraction,” Clint said, ducking completely into the room and closing the door. His eyes bounced around as he surveyed the small space, cautiously approaching Peter. “Pete? I’m going to unhook you okay buddy?”

“Mr. Barton?” Peter questioned again. Was this real? How could this be real?

“It’s going to be okay Pete,” Clint told him, deftly unlocking the cuffed from his wrists and ankles and adjusting his aching arms to sit in a more comfortable position. “I’m just waiting for confirmation and then I’ll get you out alright?” Clint wrapped a blanket around Peter’s waist and Peter remembered ‘oh right. Modesty’.

“You’re here?” Peter asked, not bothering to move from where he was placed on the table to sit up. He was so tired.

“Of course buddy,” Clint said as he carefully removed the IV catheter from Peter’s arm and let it drop to the floor. “We’re just sorry it took so long.”

“How long?” Peter asked, his fingers just barely catching the edge of Clint’s sleeve and holding on as tightly as he could manage. Clint just looked at him sadly.

“A little over five months.”

Five months? How could it just be five months? Hadn’t it been years?

“Okay kiddo,” Clint said, making sure strides over to the door and opening it, peaking out into the hall before returning to Peter’s side. “Time to go. I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the quinjet. Just relax, I know its going to hurt and I’m so sorry for that.”

“It’s okay,” Peter said, not even bothering to tense his throbbing body as Clint slipped an arm under his shoulders and legs. It wasn’t until he was lifted, until Clint had put pressure on the bright white spot of pain that was his knee that Peter blacked out. It was probably better this way, Peter postulated as he went under, this all felt like a dream anyway. He didn’t dare to hope that he would wake up away from here. Away from blood and bone and flesh and awful, visceral, blinding pain.

At least if this was a dream it was a good one.

* * *

When he woke again, Peter was warm and comfortable on something soft and covered by something heavy and knitted. The textures felt odd under his numb and tingling fingertips as they rest on top of the sheets. He blinked open his eyes.

The room around him was dim, the floor to ceiling windows dark with only the stars shining through. Peter could only stare, his grip convulsively opening and closing on the bedding. Was he out? Was this a trick? Was this real?

“Pete?”

Peter flinched and clenched his eyes shut. He recognized that voice and it terrified him. If… if _he_ wasn’t actually here. If this was a dream or a nightmare or a hallucination it would break Peter. He couldn’t take it.

“Please look at me kiddo,” the voice pleaded and Peter stiffened, taking several steadying breaths before he obliged.

“Tony?” Peter voice was harsh and scratchy with unshed tears. It was Tony. Tony fucking Stark, Iron Man, his hero, his mentor, maybe his favorite person on the planet sitting in the chair next to him, his own eyes shining bright with unshed tears and his face pale with large purple bags under his eyes. 

“It’s me bambino,” and it was. It was Tony. Tony Tony _TonyTonyTony_. A broken sob worked it was out of Peter’s throat and a tear fell from the corner of his eye to be quickly wiped away by the calloused pad of Tony’s thumb.

“You’re real?”

“Oh kid,” Tony sounded completely broken and he reached up his other hand to gently cradle Peter’s face between his hands, like he was made of glass, like he was special, like Tony cared about him. “I’m real I promise.”

“I’m out?” Peter asked, letting his body relax into the bed and Tony’s careful hands.

“You’re out. I’ve got you.”

“You’ve got me.” Peter said, letting his eyes fall closed, going boneless on the bed. Tony had him.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure I achieved the prompt I was writing for but this is what came out. Sometimes you just have to let the muse do whatever they want.
> 
> This is, perhaps, the darkest thing I’ve ever written and it gave me the chance to experiment with a different style of broken, distorted writing. I hope that I was able to get across Peter’s altered mental state and general apathy.
> 
> Regardless, this was a fun experiment.
> 
> I don’t have a tumblr but join me over on Twitter @Hale1310 - I just set it up and I’m looking for some prompts to combine with these bingo prompts and for separate stories!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


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